The bell rang on time.
That did not mean anything was right. It only meant the rope still held, and someone still cared enough to pull it.
Eryk rose with the others and joined the line without looking around. The shed emptied unevenly now. Gaps opened where pallets had been removed and never replaced. Straw lay flattened where bodies had slept weeks ago, then swept clean as if no one had ever been there.
Outside, the yard looked organized from a distance.
Closer, it was a collection of near-misses.
The chalk board stood where the intake ledger used to sit. A wide plank propped on two barrels, its surface scuffed white and gray, names and tallies layered over one another until the edges blurred.
Chalk was safe. Chalk could be wiped.
Every evening it was scrubbed down with a damp rag until only faint ghosts remained. In the morning, it began again. No evidence. No trail.
Eryk carried a crate of pickheads toward intake and set it down where he had learned foremen reached first. He did not arrange them neatly. He staggered them just enough that the uncracked ones sat forward, handles angled naturally toward grasping hands.
An older worker noticed.
"You think we don't see that?" the man said.
Eryk kept his eyes on the crate. "I'm assigned intake."
"That's not what I asked," the man replied. He stepped closer. Too close. "You got hands on it before we do. That is deciding."
Another worker had slowed nearby. Not openly watching. Close enough to hear.
Eryk felt the space tighten. He lifted the crate an inch and shifted it, not because it needed to be moved, but because movement made the confrontation less clean. Still working. Still useful. Still not a boy standing still with eyes up.
"I stack what comes in," he said. "They take what they take."
"So was my brother once," the man snapped. "Then they said he was reassigned. Chalk said it. Chalk wiped it. Now he's nowhere."
The second worker kept pretending to look for a tool. His attention stayed on Eryk anyway.
The older man leaned closer.
"You don't want people counting your hands," he said, and it sounded like advice and threat at the same time.
Eryk held the man's gaze for a beat. Too long would be invitation. Too short would be insult.
He looked away first.
Not submission. Strategy.
He bent and picked up another bundle of splintered handles, making his body busy. The older man watched him for a moment longer, jaw working, then spat into the dirt and walked off.
Eryk felt his heartbeat in his wrists.
Not fear of being hit.
Fear of being known.
The day continued.
Crates appeared where there had been none. Rope coils were gathered into neat stacks. Chains, the ones that still looked solid, were separated from the cracked ones and placed under canvas. The canvas was tied carefully, knots neat, as if the knots mattered more than the men they were being taken from.
A cart rolled past with a tool chest on it, lid strapped down.
It headed toward the gate.
No one cheered. No one asked where it was going.
But people watched it as it passed, eyes following the wheels until it disappeared through the corridor.
A man near the fence murmured to another, "New site."
The other man's face changed in a way Eryk recognized. The muscles around his mouth loosened. His eyes lifted a fraction.
Hope.
Thin. Quick. Useful.
It moved through the yard like rope thrown over a ledge. Men did not climb yet. They only looked up.
At midday the chalk board was wiped clean.
Not in the evening. Not at a bell change. Midday, as men still worked.
The clerk took a wet rag and scrubbed hard until the board went dark with water and the chalk ran in pale streaks down onto his fingers. He worked like he was erasing a mistake that could not be allowed to remain visible.
No evidence. No trail.
He set the rag aside and wrote fresh names.
Different work.
Different pairings.
Eryk watched his own name appear again, this time under a new line.
Transport prep.
He blinked once.
He had not been told. He had not been asked. He had not done anything new.
His name was there because it was already easy to find.
A boy beside him leaned in, eyes wide.
"What's transport prep mean?" the boy whispered.
Eryk did not answer.
The clerk called names, and the clean-boot guards began counting bundles at the gate.
Not searching. Counting.
A man stepped forward with a sack on his shoulder. The guard poked it once with two fingers, not to check what was inside, only to feel its weight.
"Too heavy," the guard said.
"It's my blanket," the man protested.
The guard stared at him with no anger.
"Too heavy," he repeated.
The man's mouth opened as if he might argue. Then he looked at the gate. He looked at the other guard. He looked at the yard behind him, at all the faces pretending not to watch.
His fingers found the knot at the sack's mouth.
He untied it and pulled out a hammer.
He hesitated, grip tight around the handle.
Then he set it on the ground.
No one reached for it.
The guard nudged it aside with his boot, marked something on a small board, and waved the man through.
The hammer lay where it was until a boy's hand drifted toward it and stopped.
The boy looked at the guard. Looked at the rope. Withdrew his hand.
Later, the hammer was swept into a growing pile near the fence.
Residual.
A second pile grew beside it, smaller.
Shirts. Belts. A boot with the toe crushed flat.
Things that had belonged to someone yesterday and belonged to no one today.
Eryk kept sorting.
A name was called.
Wrong.
Two men answered.
They looked at each other, confusion crossing their faces in the same moment. One of them shook his head.
"That's not," he began.
The clerk squinted at the board. The chalk had smeared.
He hesitated.
One of the guards pointed.
"You," he said.
The man closest to the gate went.
The other took a step forward, then stopped.
"That's not me," he said carefully, as if careful words could keep him whole.
The guard did not look at him.
The clerk opened his mouth. Closed it again.
The chalk was rubbed away.
The man who had protested stood still, eyes fixed on the board as if the board might restore him if he stared hard enough.
Then the clerk wrote a new mark over the pale smear and the space where the name had been became something else.
A different assignment.
A different fate.
The man turned, slow, like a tool being set back in a drawer. He drifted toward the yard, not to work, but to find a place where he would not be in the way.
A second guard put a hand on his shoulder and moved him a half-step without looking at his face.
Not a shove. Not cruelty.
Cargo repositioned.
The man swallowed hard and did not resist.
Eryk adjusted a rope coil so it would not lean.
His hands were steady.
He understood now that correctness was not protection.
Only being forgettable was.
Near noon, the chalk board was copied onto paper.
Carefully.
Eryk saw the paper for only a moment when the intake door opened and someone inside shifted. A thin slice of warmth and ink smell slipped into the yard. Murmurs. The scrape of parchment edges.
A clerk stepped out with hands stained black to the knuckles, ink permanent under the nails.
The door closed again.
Carefully.
Chosen non-interruption.
Outside, the chalk board still stood.
But now it was less important than what had been carried through that door.
The cloaked man checked the copied list once and folded it.
Then the clerk wiped the board clean.
Fully.
In front of everyone.
Names vanished that would not return.
The rope line shifted inward again.
The yard compressed.
After the board was wiped, someone laughed.
A short, thin sound, like air forced through cracked lips.
No one joined.
Hala returned later with stew and bread both.
Not much. Not enough to be generous.
But more than yesterday.
It made heads lift again. It made men look toward the gate corridor with something like belief.
Eryk ate without showing it on his face. He felt the suspicion in his gut more clearly than the warmth.
This was not mercy.
This was staging.
The afternoon ran on rails.
Carts moved. Bundles counted. Names pointed at. Errors left uncorrected. Tools swept into residual piles.
The yard kept functioning, but it was a different kind of function now.
Not production.
Packing.
Eryk saw Tomas near the rope line, trying to stand where pointing would find him, then stepping away as if he had never intended to. He pretended to adjust a strap. He pretended he was there for nothing.
Bran stood by the shed wall with his arms folded, face blank, watching the gate like a man watching a fire he could not put out.
Eryk kept his hands on tools.
He did not move toward the gate.
Not because he was brave.
Because he knew what moving toward the gate meant.
It meant being seen as a piece ready to be lifted.
Late afternoon, a cry rose from the quarry path.
Not panic.
A warning.
Eryk turned his head before he could stop himself.
Running made attention.
He forced his eyes back to his hands and kept tying.
When the bell rang for end of work, it sounded the same.
That was the worst part.
The yard did not erupt. The yard did not grieve. Men did not demand lists or explanations. They drifted toward their pallets and their bowls like water finding a lower place.
At the kitchen, the evening stew was still slightly thicker than it had been last week. A small improvement, held just long enough to keep hands moving.
Eryk ate. Bran ate beside him.
Tomas stared at the gate corridor between mouthfuls, as if he expected the clean boots to return and point at him.
Bran spoke softly when the bowls were set aside.
"They moved three today," he said.
"Three," Tomas repeated, and his voice had something in it that wanted to be hope and could not afford to be.
Bran's mouth twisted.
"It's the reliable ones," he said. "Men that know what breaks before it breaks. Men that know where things go."
Tomas laughed once, short and dry.
"So they take the ones that still work," he said.
Bran shook his head slowly.
"They take what still works," he said, but the words came out fractured, more breath than sentence. "They leave the rest to grind."
Eryk carried his bowl back to the wash line.
Lysa would have been there once, hands red, eyes sharp, tracking who tried to steal an extra scrape. The line was a mess now. A boy scrubbed too little and hoped it would pass. Another scrubbed too much and wasted sand.
No one corrected them.
No one had time.
Eryk washed his bowl until it was clean enough to reflect a faint shape of his own face.
Not because he cared about cleanliness.
Because dirty bowls brought attention.
He returned to the shed as the last light died.
Inside, the gaps between pallets looked wider.
Not more empty.
Wider, as if the space itself had started to spread.
He lay down and listened.
Outside, the yard settled. Somewhere up the hill, a door shut.
Not slammed.
Closed carefully.
A sound of someone choosing not to be interrupted.
Eryk stared at the rafters until his eyes blurred.
The bell rope would be pulled again tomorrow.
If it was not, the yard would still wake.
Straw would still rustle. Coughs would still rise. Men would still move toward whatever work was nearest, and the chalk board would still be wiped clean of anything that could become evidence.
He closed his eyes.
In the dark, he could still see his name on the board, smeared at the edges.
He could still feel the guard's fingers testing a bundle for weight.
He could still smell chalk dust on the clerk's hands.
And somewhere beyond the walls, tools were already rolling away on wheels that did not look back.